Aunt Constance was away, but, as it was my birthday, I invited myself to lunch with Uncle Jasper. Father and Ross came too. In the middle of lunch my uncle looked at me over the top of his glasses and said,—
'Well, Meg, so you are seventeen and have left school. What are you going to do now?'
An idea that had been simmering in my mind for some days suddenly came on top,—
'I'm going to write a book.'
Ross stared at me, aghast. 'Jerubbesheth!' he exclaimed, 'when you could hunt three days a week, walk a puppy, and do the things that really matter. What fools girls are!'
'Have you sufficient knowledge of any one subject to write a book about it?' Uncle Jasper inquired.
'Oh, my angel,' I exclaimed, 'I don't refer to the stuff you and father produce. I'm not going to write a treatise on architecture, or Dante, or the Cumulative Evidences of the Cherubim. I mean fiction—a story—a novel.'
'But even so,' persisted my uncle, 'you can't write about things of which you know nothing!'
'But you don't have to know about things when you write fiction. You make it up as you go along, don't you see?'
'You only want a hero and a heroine and a plot,' my brother giggled.